


Mutiny

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1995-01-01
Updated: 1995-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Blake refuses to open his trousers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutiny

**Author's Note:**

> Printed in the zine 'Forbidden Star', editor Judith Proctor, 1995  
> Messy story but I thought so then. Also I despised technology solutions. Amazingly, I like the sex scene; and the odd sentence.

###  
##

Avon stepped down onto a surreal flight deck. Fatigue shock, he decided at once. Since Space City, Blake's wits had been dispersing to the far spatial horizons. Now he was finally off his launch-rails, from seeing the proliferation of the evil guys.

“Avon,” waved Vila genially. “Join us in a threesome.”

Fingers playing in a manner too saturnine to be called fiddling, Avon wandered to the couch and hung over Vila. “What kind of a threesome?” he inquired, enigmatically wicked.

“Cards,” protested Vila, brandishing a hand of them. Then his injured air vanished – “Though more thrilling suggestions can be proposed to the party and voted upon.”

Avon threw a furtively bantering look at Blake – his humour was in the rebel's honour. “Not on the flight deck, you might sophisticate Blake. Our crusader isn't quite acclimatised to the criminal element yet.”

“Hang around and you might learn unsuspected things about the rebel element. Blake's been teaching me a traditional dissident game, to while away nights before a strike – one game lasting an average of one Earth night. It's popularly known as Dementia.”

“Ominous name.”

Blake spoke up, sepulchral. “One has to be demented to agree to play.”

“Or drunk,” beamed Vila.

“Or fey. We strike Plato Three in eighteen hours.”

“Or desperate,” added Vila.

“Or a black humourist,” finished Blake.

“Staying on Liberator qualifies me under the last category,” said Avon. “I can smell which Vila qualifies under. How about Blake?”

“All of them,” growled Blake. “Though I'm still working on the drunk.”

Vila continued, “The entry fee is a bottle of liquor rarer, more expensive and more potent than any so far tendered. So if you can out-class Blake's Gourimpesian red-label irradiated soma with solar particles, and my Black Hole neo-rum which is a cataclysmic twelve hundred and sixty years old, you're in.”

“Well now,” said Avon. “I do possess a phial of distilled Zondawl eight-tusked swamp rhino milk. Which I was hoarding for a particular occasion. But since the occasion is unlikely to ever occur, why not?”

Vila perked up further. “Some survivors claim swamp rhino milk has aphrodisiac properties.”

“Only if the catalyst of sugar is introduced. I like mine straight – but it does tend to be bitter for the less sophisticated palate.”

Blake warned him, “In the last round we all play with a severe handicap. That is, we mix a cocktail of every player's entry fee and swallow the result before proceeding. Incidentally, the history of this game does record the odd fatality.”

“ _You_ may do so, Blake. No wonder Freedom Party enterprises were uniformly disastrous. I'll fly your ship to Plato Three in the morning, shall I?”

“Rule of the game,” Vila said. “There are dress rules too, but not so strict. The more weird and wonderful, the more points you begin with.”

“I noticed. You look like a costume party in a rehabilitation centre.”

The thief was apparelled in the lower half of a space suit, a detached pink thermal-suit hood, twelve teleport bracelets and a graffiti-scrawled Federation flag wrapped around his torso. Blake was dressed to the nines in Gan's elephantine tunic, Vila's garish yellow belt and, wound about his head, Cally's embroidered shawl from a market on a primitive planet, from the hem of which Jenna's earring collection jangled in a sparkling, jouncing fringe to his eyebrows.

“You haven't anything of mine on, Blake.”

“How do you know?” the guerrilla countered ambiguously from the shadow of his shawl. Avon smirked, rather intrigued.

“The other rule,” said Vila, “is that everyone swears on their honour to forget everything in the morning.”

“Amen,” muttered Blake.

Less reckless with his dignity than Blake, the technician submitted that he was both weird and wonderful enough without dressing to prove it. Vila passed the former half of this motion. Blake consulted Orac, and translated the computer's assessment of Avon's intellect as passing the latter half. So Avon repaired to his cabin, and reappeared in the fine garments he'd purchased one planet-leave for stopovers on civilized worlds. A cream shirt with pointed cuffs and collar, and a gap of skin from clavicle down over which thirteen bronze clasps fastened. The trousers were genuine jeujo-skin, supple leather mottled with amber down the outside thighs, tailored with a slight puff from the hips and narrow from the knees. Once Blake had mentioned that he looked 'smashing' in the outfit.

Only when he returned with his bottle did they inform Avon about the forfeits. These obliged you to do anything your debtee told you to do (with the option of quitting the game in a tantrum, in which case you lost your entire liquor cabinet to your fellow players). And the truths, where your debtee could ask you any question which must be answered honestly. And finally the secrets, where you must impart a secret – any secret – to your debtee. Avon cautioned them that he thought he would be bad at this game, and with that he joined the play.

When, in the first fifteen minutes, Avon incurred a forfeit to Blake, the rebel told him gravely, “You will address me by my first name three times before morning.”

Avon, reminded of the planet Artemis, couldn't resist quirking his mouth. A while ago, Artemis, and besides, Blake was indeed working hard on the drunk. “You only needed to ask.” He played on, relishing a precious drop of swamp rhino milk. But his mind was elsewhere and elsewhen – on the Artemis trip.

Its object had been liaison with a fifth quadrant anarchist ring, necessitating a tent in the jungle for three days. Blake had picked Jenna for her savvy in negotiating with all kinds, and, alone with Avon in the mess, said that he might help down there too.

“Surely a third party would be redundant?” Avon had answered, arch. “For the mission, I mean. And I imagine three days in a tent with only your most devoted follower will be good for your conviction.”

Blake had snarled, “Keep your imaginings to yourself. You can keep this mob under surveillance.”

“Zen warns there are predator cats down there. I suppose those are enough to worry about without a predator inside the tent too. I'll be your chaperone, Blake.” He glided from the mess before Blake could seize him and rattle his teeth. Actually, of late Blake was too tolerant of his audacity, which was of late too personal when no-one was listening in. Discipline was futile – Avon was obsessive about poking Blake with his wit, poking him here and there with daredevil intimacy. Jenna made a good target. She chased Blake, and perhaps Blake knew that Avon knew that the chase was misdirected. Avon, more objective than Jenna, noticed where his eyes strayed to on the populous streets of planets. Not to Jenna's gender. It amused him.

On the second day in the tent, Blake has asked him, “Where's Jenna? I wish she wouldn't wander off alone.”

“She's probably frustrated. With the tedium of the mission, I mean.”

Edgy, Blake wheeled on him. “Avon, were you ever told that your humour is heavy-handed and distinctly deficient in sympathy?” It did not, however, amuse Blake, who was probably sorry about Jenna and possibly ashamed.

Avon was waiting for this opportunity. “You're the one who ribs Jenna on the flight deck. And you complain when I tease – between the two of us?”

“I kid Jenna to keep things light-hearted. I hate to speculate why you kid me.”

Avon played retreat. “Remind me never to presume to mention anything relating to your personal life again.”

Blake pursued. “Avon, I didn't mean it was presumption.” Defining what was welcome and what was trespass with the coy, courting way of children. “Only a little sensitivity might not go astray.”

“I noticed how sensitive you are about the – cross-purposes. But if you don't like me to be amused by you, you ought not to tie yourself in moral knots.”

“I'm glad you find my troubles entertaining,” Blake said with the nearest he came to cynicism.

“If I didn't find you entertaining, I might have left your ship of fools six months ago. No doubt I am heavy-handed. But perhaps you only choose to believe I'm unsympathetic.”

Blake was wrapped around the tent pole, knuckles gouging his cheek. He just glowered in remote hostility.

Noticed how I see through you yet? asked Avon mentally. And as the cliche goes, takes one to know one. Blake needn't be ashamed with him. Avon was no doubt worse.

That evening Blake counted mines to demolish an abandoned rebel cave settlement, a mile off. Avon told him he had company for the journey.

“It's a one-person job, Avon.”

“I'll join you anyway. Jungle and politics bore me desperately.”

“So ask to share Jenna's Amagon whiskey.”

“She'll charge me nine credits a sip.”

“Maybe not. Appeal to her sense of criminal fellowship. You are two of the most notorious crooks in Federated space.”

Criminals and crooks, thought Avon. Everything worthwhile I stole – from kidnapping Anna from her husband to hijacking Liberator. Only I'm more crooked than Jenna. She 'free trades' for Blake, which has a modicum of fairness. Foolish of her, since her haggling gets her nowhere. And naive of Blake – he recruits a gang of robbers, then acts perplexed when they squabble and snatch for him.

“If you weren't both so stiff and suspicious,” Blake was saying, “you might find something in common.”

Why was he throwing around unsolicited advice about getting along with Jenna? Avon grinned ferally. Trust Blake to put the ugliest connotation on his needling. “Blake, I'm not after your pilot.”

The bluntness embarrassed Blake. “I never suggested --”

“I confess I look at her.” Damn this tent-living, anyway. How could he help noticing that Jenna had magnificent breasts and was disdainfully indifferent about baring them? If Blake had noticed him notice, he must have been scrutinising Avon on the sly – why? Blake watching Avon watching Jenna watching Blake? But Avon had noticed Jenna with cold animal appreciation. And he had no wish to lapse into the stagnation of fashionable alpha society, where you screwed people for their magnificent breasts or the equivalent and for nothing more. He'd also noticed that Blake's chest was pure strong silk – not a shadow of his own dark thicket – and that admiration had been neither cold nor animal. “But even a heavy-handed brute like me,” Avon continued, “rarely enjoys sleeping with people with whom he is stiff and suspicious.”

“I wasn't prying, Avon.” Blake looked at sea over the fact that Avon was willing to discuss these matters as well as jest about them.

“So may I come with you?”

“I'd appreciate your company.”

“Yes, it only took half an hour to impose it upon you.”

The walk to the old camp was pensive, Blake being clam-mouthed. They caved in the cave and returned. Halfway home, Blake happened to glance over at Avon. “Kerr,” he said urgently, and yanked Avon's elbow. He had a powerful yank, and Avon keeled against him. Blake's gunshaft glimmered – which ruled out the theory that he was overcome by abrupt amorous inclinations. So Avon looked to see what the fuss was about. From the tree he'd been passing under, a malevolently yawning snake swung. No doubt horribly poisonous. Harbouring scant respect for native wildlife, Avon annihilated it.

The snake didn't astonish him, but hearing his private name did. No decorous alpha exercised that privilege without permission. Why would that be the name to pop into Blake's head for a warning yell? Only one feasible explanation – it was in his mind already. The miles-away Blake must have been daydreaming about him. Imagining that they two of them were familiars. Experimenting with the name he had never requested license to speak...

Avon was clasping Blake. It was his reflex to danger. Blake desired to retreat into the black vines – that fact was as tangible as the perfumed, sticky air. His guilt only gave him further away. He offered a level apology.

“I don't mind if you like to call me that.”

Blake escaped his protective clasp, as was his delayed reflex, and slashed through jungle.

Avon jeered at his own little speech. I don't mind if you like me. Why must he camouflage gratification when Blake said he was a whiz with Zen or detector shield, or when he said 'you look smashing' after he teleported in expensive new clothes? From his school days Avon had been beyond praise – the outsider with alarming brains. With a problematic social adjustment. The envious and the deferential so persistently didn't praise him that he understood his intelligence to be something of a faux pas. The whole university had admired him. The only peer in a position to like him was Tynus, nearly as clever and twice as unstable. Blake, he had assumed when they met, was the last kind to like him. Heart and no brains, he would mock of Blake, while he mocked of himself, brains and no heart.

The jangle of Blake's twenty earrings roused Avon from the past to the present. Playing mechanically, he found he owed Vila a truth. The thief whispered his question – one could elect not to share questions, answers or secrets with the whole company. “Why do you stay with Blake, then?”

Avon's own question, from Station X-K 72, fielded home. He raised the flap of Vila's pink hood and whispered back. “Possibly because I like the lunatic.” Telling the truth to a harmless receptacle was rather pleasant.

“Which isn't a good enough excuse?” asked Vila aloud.

“I'm working on a better one.”

Whereupon the cheeky delta winked. “I noticed.” Vila, of course, noticed bloody everything, and was worse than him in joking about it. Whispering even lower, Vila said, “Blake's some kind of celibate, isn't he?”

“Blake's some kind of scared,” he hiss-whispered. Then, very loud indeed, “Why don't you crawl the rest of the way into that Black Hole bottle so that I can cork it?” He gave Blake a candescent smile.

Blake gave him a strange, grim one, and emptied more irradiated soma into the dark well inside him, where it sank without trace of effect. Abruptly, Avon thought – off his launch-rails? No, just in despair. Why not perform one's despair through the medium of a farcical and inebriated card game with one's unquestioning shipmates? At times Blake inspired a wash of pity in Avon – alien to him, and maladroitly acted upon. He only lurked here to pillage Blake. Along the lines of a lean-ribbed pirate ship slinking parallel to a tauntingly fat merchant vessel, to ransack it of luxuries. Still, though his motive was the spoils, Avon believed that Blake had much to learn from him. Chiefly, that his rebellion was a squandering of energy. That Avon knew the only path to happiness. Selfishness. Selfish gratifications, snatched from a galaxy trying to do you out of them. Gratifications were rarer than warg strangler's teeth, and they had to be stolen. It was past time Blake learnt. This was a night to be shameless, decided the technician.

Avon was doing rather badly in the game. He had neither Blake's experience nor Vila's aptitude for cheating. Next, Blake won a secret from him. “An honest-to-goodness secret, mind,” Vila admonished. He was enjoying the exotic liquors, the sartorial spectacle and particularly the looks on people's faces.

Arm looping Blake's neck to mutter the secret in his ear, Avon discovered the surreptitious charms of this game. For instance, his nose brushing a dark lock that had escaped the gypsy shawl, and the way Gan's tunic kept slipping off a shoulder. “Roj, contrary to rumour my cardiac tissue is not herculaneum.”

“That was a weighty secret,” said Blake. “One Roj down, two to go.” He resumed play, plying the cards with thwarted energy.

Avon contrived to be in his debt for a second secret. This time he confided, “Nor am I as monosexual as you might think.” Blake's caginess made Avon contrastingly brash. If it were possible, he would enjoy to shock the rebel. Affront him, even.

Sheltered in drink and the ceremony of the game, Blake remained inscrutable. “Actually, I'd guessed that one.”

“Then it doesn't qualify as a secret? I've plenty more for you.”

“That one will suffice. Play on.”

“Do you mean your dragging of feet related only to my first secret?”

“This is a contest, Avon, not a conversation.”

Nevertheless, after he sampled both Vila's entry fee and Avon's, Blake mellowed and stopped refusing to meet Avon's eyes. Tumbling in Blake's, Avon caught mistrust – an impish curiosity – a desolate aloofness. For some peculiar reason, Blake was reluctant to acknowledge the erotic charge between them. And yet it was Blake who had actualised inquisitiveness into acquisitiveness. Blake had begun this. With a grin here, a glance down there, a hand drifting elsewhere. Late nightwatches, early mornings, both thinking the same outlawed thoughts. Blake being sad and suggestive, Avon in response being laid back and slightly lewd. Avon knew himself too barren to incubate a passion anymore. He had depended upon Blake to guide him into this terrain of heightened loneliness and mirages on the horizon. Now, over recent weeks, Blake had left him stranded there. No more grins, brushings-past, humour about illegal acts, no having Avon threatening not-quite-specified things with his laser probe. Now Blake was acting blind to Avon's gropings for Blake's own daydream. As if Blake had no faith in it after all. It wasn't fair.

Winning a truth from him, Blake snared Avon's little finger in the crook of his to ask, looking skittish, “What occasion were you saving you swamp rhino milk for?”

“For the night you stop denying me,” was the undertoned answer.

Blake threw the dice down perversely hard. Vila had to crawl under Orac's trolley to retrieve them. Perhaps it was the sight of his ballooning spacesuit trousers stuck fast between the trolley legs that pushed Blake's sense of the absurd over the edge. He dropped his head on his forearms and yielded to a near-silent attack of mirth. Still snared by his little finger, Avon peered with mock concern into the hollow of his arms. Surfacing for breath, Blake bumped him, temple into brow. The shock of unprepared proximity. Eyes clung. Zeroed-in, damp and crinkled with laughter, no-joking eyes. Then Blake kissed him. Not that he chose to, Avon sensed. A gravity field dictated it. For a second or two, Blake cheek warm and musk in his nostrils, touched lips, soft and strong and savoury. Blood to the shark of his lust, which thrashed down there in his gut at the taste. He widened his mouth, hungry.

Then Blake got a strangle-grip on his instincts. He grabbed his glass for an anchor and released Avon's finger. Leaning back, he eyed Avon as if there were a secret wry joke passing between them. Seeing him in his embroidered, earringed headdress, Avon was in turn infected by hysteria. “Take if off, Blake,” he pleaded, in a grotesque seizure of laughter. It was the bathos of the thing – from the sublime to the ridiculous.

“I can't, Kerr. I'd be disqualified.” The rebel stroked Avon's hair once and laughed with him, in a composed baritone.

Vila, while asprawl on the deck, had missed the kiss. Or if not, he behaved as if he had. The game soldiered on. If a player wished to ask for a forfeit which he suspected would be screechingly refused, he could reserve forfeits and thus treble or quadruple his coercive power. Avon dedicated the following two hours to winning and reserving forfeits against Blake. With miserly glee he stashed away five of them. Blake listened to his tone grow more sinister with each he counted off – and, unperturbed, sipped soma with solar particles.

“Any rules about reservation of forfeits?” Vila asked Blake.

“Tell us the whole truth, now,” smiled Avon, evilly. “Don't forget you're incorruptible.” Under prodding, Blake confessed that with a debt of five forfeits, a player could not decline any act, unless it imperilled life or limb. “Ah,” gloated Avon, and toasted himself in congratulation. When Vila clamoured for the pronouncement of Blake's forfeit, Avon was arch. “I can be patient. The nightwatch is young.” By this stage, the three of them were about as drunk as each other.

“You can't whisper forfeits, you know. Against the rules.”

“Never fear, Vila. I shall enlighten Blake as to his mandatory forfeit quite loudly enough for you to hear. Unless, of course, you happen to be absent from the flight deck at the time. Judging from the volume of neo-rum you've been guzzling, I shan't have to keep our fearless leader in suspense for too long.”

“Spoilsport.”

When the time came, however, Vila tramped away grinning like an elf. “You always this brazen with Vila when unwitnessed?” asked a curious Blake with muzzy eyes.

“Believe it or not, he's discreet. And he's always this brazen with me, so why not?” But Avon lost his jauntiness, alone with Blake, still costumed and still sombre. “Roj. There's no need for me to put a name to your forfeit, is there?” Names were either too crude, or too trite or too – romantic. He didn't quite know what to call it. He'd been far too long at a loss how to ask Blake.

“Twice for the Roj,” muttered he. “Incidentally, I believe I neglected to mention that if I win three forfeits against you, and afterwards produce a royal flush within fifteen minutes, I can use your forfeits to compel you to withdraw my forfeits.”

Avon glared, the way a laser cannon glares in space. When he thought about the kiss his blood still thumped off-beat, and the shark squirmed. Yet here was his accomplice in that thieved kiss, getting cold feet about going through with it. Too late – the deal was made.

Then Avon frowned at his own surly reaction. Don't get ugly, he told himself. He can still cold-shoulder you, he has the discipline. He gets his cravings, and frequently. I get demands, rare and crippling. How can you tell him that your right hand only leaves you in a worse state and you detest strangers? What does he do? Strange how his company restores me like no aggravating sex in a cold narrow bunk or skewered with the meat of a pick-up. Strange, after a planet-leave, I return to the ship hating, and I spend a watch with him and he knows what I have done – “Bad leave?” - “Bad enough” - and as the watch goes on my thoughts get less – rancid. He does that. He knows he does that.

But the game was too parodic, the powerplay was too earnest, and exasperation sweltered in Avon. “I only have your word that this convenient rule exists. I could be persuaded that you're inventing this game as you go along. Perhaps Dementia in its entirety is a figment of your drunken, fey and desperate imagination.”

“I didn't mislead you about the five forfeit rule, did I? Despite you playing the most unscrupulous game of cards I've been privileged to witness.”

“Well now,” he drawled in defiance. “You may have fabricated that rule too. A pretext so you can blamelessly sleep with me.”

“Possibly.” Blake was gruff and repelling.

It was almost one of their rows. “You may bear a charmed life, Blake, but you won't conjure up a royal flush in fifteen minutes. Not even in extremis, fighting for your chastity.”

The rebel shrugged. “You never know your bad luck.”

“Whose bad luck exactly?”

“Have you any sadistic tendencies?”

Avon narrowed his eyes, not caring for this joke. “Have I what?”

“If you were a sadist, I could invoke the escape clause about imperilling life or limb. Just an idle thought.”

“Extremely idle, Blake.” He wondered whether he had the right to resent that. But Blake had an unusual smile, sly and finding everything humorous, which denied him the right.

At this pass Vila came waltzing in. He wiggled a meddlesome eyebrow at Avon. The latter scowled for an answer. To be translated as 'foiled again.' Avon played sullenly, urged to whip Blake for suggesting he was after abuse between them.

Blake had chalked up two forfeits against Avon, in his campaign to avoid being won in card game, when Vila performed an astounding feat. A match of Dementia was a twelve-hour affair. Except in the extraordinary event of a player producing a certain complex configuration of cards, chips and dice scores, which was referred to as a White Nova Fizzler. This stunt was pulled, on average, once every fifty games. The winner was then honoured evermore as a Grand Fizzler Master. Blake had detailed this purely as entertainment, never dreaming...

… that Vila would Fizzle before his very eyes. Blake goggled. The triumphant Vila swept his arms wide for the accolades. Avon, who, observing Blake's demeanour, had come to the fatalistic conclusion that it was not beyond his power to transubstantiate thin air and stubbornness into a royal flush, went limp and smiled conspiratorially at the ceiling.

So the cocktails of Gourimpesian irradiated soma, Black Hole neo-rum and Zondawl swamp rhino milk were never tested. These entry fees were Vila's winnings. “Go easy on the sugar,” Avon advised him, handing his phial over without too much regret. “For the crew's sake.” When Blake withdrew to divest himself of his paraphernalia, he added casually, “Strategically timed, Vila.”

“Yeah, figured I'd take pity on Blake. This elaborate plan to lose his virtue and it was threatening not to work.”

Avon blinked. “That your theory?”

“I got eyes.” On this note of deltan encouragement, he cradled his booty against his Federation flag and left Avon alone on the flight deck.

There, after a few hours of being pickled then sobered then pickled again, he thought thievishly of Roj Blake. Not that I can appeal to the witness if he reneges on his forfeit. What can Vila do – referee the game? What can I do – declare that's the last time I play cards with a cheat like him? But he kissed me, and I saw him stewing in it too. I didn't kiss him. Vila is right – Blake began this.

Blake began this, possibly, that time he hugged him. He had hugged him once. Quite early on in this new Flying Dutchman's voyage. Long before Artemis. Avon had thought for the first time, then... Blake had been pimping his brain for a radical sect who were illiterate in programming languages. Late afternoon, in the terminal room. Slaving at the keyboard, when he noticed a remarkable expression on Blake's face. The grim fighter was looking at the doorway. Loving, mischievous, biting a finger – who or what could he be looking at in that way? Avon leaned to see past the monitor. A child. A scruffy, plump rebel's brat. A finger in its mouth in mimicry of Blake, wavy buttery hair, assessing eyes. Peeping smile. Blake crouched so she was as tall as him. She said, “'ello.” He said, “'ello,” and grinned. Next thing, she was orbiting her toy spaceship around his curls. Blake laughed and began on a good imitation of childish babble. The girl liked him, babbling back.

Then a woman intruded, chiding and panicky, threw an agitated look at Blake – not near his eyes – and yanked the brat out of there. Rising, Blake was disappointed and mildly puzzled. Then it hit him. That juicy news item, his trail. That smear campaign. In many people's eyes, the mud stuck.

For a terrorist, Blake had a thin skin. He had reacted to this like to spittle in the face, and he had marched away from Avon's terminal, his face kept in the other direction. Avon had hissed, from where he sat, “Who cares what rumours a ratbag colonist listens to?”

Blake had muttered, “She believes my mind is that rotted --”

“So the Justice Department has a filthy imagination. At least half their strategy is working. Those charges were calculated to undermine your morale and you're co-operating.”

Blake hadn't said anything, hands on his hips, except when one disappeared to rub his face. Irked by his susceptibility, Avon had gone and jerked him around by the shoulder, to drum sense into him.

Then Blake had clutched at him. They were nearly strangers, they were flight deck antagonists already, but he had hugged him. It was not alphan. It was not done. Blake did it. Mixed-grade Freedom Party behaviour, he supposed. So Avon had stood there like a tin soldier, with Blake thrust in his senses, the working of the muscles in his arms too alive, too much. Then Blake withdrew, coughed, and said, “Sorry. Sorry, lapse of...” He didn't finish, but sat down at a terminal.

Awkward, Avon tapped on at the keyboard. There was some turmoil of warmth in his chest where it had been against Blake's, which pressured him to detain him and ask – the only grounds he knew for touching – sleep with me, Blake?

He had not, of course. He hadn't even known why he wanted to. The thought had recurred, from the strangest time to the strangest time, since. When Blake was forlorn, or guilty, or bloody angry. Why these things should get him in the libido, he did not understand. They reminded him of Blake needy and clutching at him, and that reminded him of his wide thumping chest against him, the chest he would rather enjoy to scuffle around with and sink his teeth into. Perhaps he was a sadist after all. Going for Blake when Blake was down. Either he pitied Blake. Or he was sick.

In the final stage of the Dementia match Avon had bet and lost two bottles of red wine to Blake. Contingency planning. If Blake wasn't disposed to collect, Avon would have to deliver. It looked like Blake wasn't. He picked out the wine in his cabin and continued down the corridor.

Blake's door was ajar. In ambush on the threshold, Avon inspected the slice of jumbled cabin he could see. Pinned star-maps scrawled with notes, a planetscape, higgledy-piggledy paper piles – as rumoured, Blake slept with his cause – whiff of old incense that re-created the smell of greenery for reluctant spacers. Blake passed.

“Roj.”

“Ah. I thought you'd forgotten the third Roj.” He nodded Avon in. Having restored his shipmates' tunic, belt and shawl, he was only in trousers. Giveaway, thought Avon. Unless he's just a tease. His chest, pale from domes and spaceflight and hefty. Avon looked at it. Blake lodged his shoulders against the far wall and crossed muscled arms over his chest – as though piecing together a bastion. From there he watched his guest through slitted, smoky-dark eyes.

“I came to deliver this exceptionally fine wine.” The bottle necks slid in his hands. Was he sweating? Avon compared himself to a warg strangler tamer in a circus. You have claws, but I have the whiphand. Under the circumstances, just swallow your pride and co-operate... he didn't mean to demand. Only it was difficult to unlearn his customary abruptness with Blake. They had a history of conflict, to starkly contrast with any softer method and ridicule it before it began.

Blake cocked his head and chewed a finger, up from his crossed arms. “I thought you came to seduce me. Your latest plot.”

Mockery, dare? Blake was in one of his shuttered moods, the kind where anything he said sounded ambiguous. Remembering his depression of earlier in the evening, Avon decided to be patient. He thought of alphan seduction routines. Always barren, and here they would be burlesque. He thought of dumping Blake down and prising apart his knees. Tempting, but futile. Blake had his insurgent gleam in his eye. He would have to reason with him.

“You can't,” he questioned, “deny you're interested.”

“No, I can't. And never did.”

“You have been avoiding me.”

“My business,” he said.

“Is none of my business?”

Blake laughed. “I'm public property. I'm any official's business, if they have clearance to access my psych records. Everything's in there. The only decent secret I have is you. But I'm drunk. Never mind that.”

His signals were conflicting, like his ajar door. He was prohibiting himself from doing what he wanted to do. Give it up, Blake, Avon thought. You're not the kind. You think too much of this charade we're about to go through together. If you were as cynical as me, now, you'd stand a chance of kicking me from your cabin.

Feigning levity, he asked, “Where's your charity gone?” His gaze loitered with intent about Blake's jawline, the slight depression low in his cheek. I must kiss him there.

“That shirt of yours will be the ruin of me,” Blake complained, equally flippant.

“That ought to be worth the ninety credits.” I'm posturing, Avon realised.

“Stop damn joking.” The soma acting for him, Blake's finger poked itself into the slit down the front of Avon's shirt. “This is mutiny, you know.”

“So that's what it's called. And what happens to those who mutiny?”

A forbidding frown. “They are most severely osculated.”

Avon huffed through a smile. “You're not frightening me, Blake. Anyway, you're quite safe. Deigning to jump me is your forfeit, which is part of the game, which we have sworn on our honour to pretend never happened in the morning.” That finger on his sternum was lashing up the shark, and he'd had a hot stone in his trousers since he approached within five feet of Blake's glossy flanks. Go on, whimper at him. Works for Decimas. “I need --” a lie to say 'it' – “you.”

Blake must have made a sign of agreement. For then Avon was kissing his jaw, his throat, nearly gnawing his shoulder, hands greedy for the skin of him. Tangling his fingers in the tousled hair. His hunger for kissing terrible. Blake was moaning and clutching tight, hiking up Avon's shirt to feel their chests together. Nipples together, and Blake moaned.

Tugging him, Avon glanced with impatient eyes at the bed. Blake dug in his heels, and would not be tugged. As you like, I shall ravish you where you stand, thought Avon. And where I fall, unless you take over from my knees... which were trembling. A hot thumb climbed the damp groove of his spine. And he twined under it –

– the percussion of the ridge in his trousers grazing the ridge in Blake's. Stares crashed together too. Seizing two fistfuls of hair, he mesmerised Blake's eyes with a rascal stare and Blake's cock with the cunning roll of his hips. Fearless leader didn't survive this campaign. Roj whipped his head left and right against the wall, enough to slam it, and clung to Avon's rump – as if panic-stricken that he might go away. He looked agonised. Avon was.

When he dived a hand for Blake's trouser fastenings, Blake said, “No,” and wrenched off the hand. Avon stopped to stare. Only fever was on Blake's face. Blue novas, _no_? What can he mean by _no_ at this late stage? Avon, aggressively, tore at his own trousers instead, exposing his cock. Blake touched the stickiness. That did for Blake. He slammed his hands off, to the wall, and swore over and over. He was going to come. Avon mauled his shoulders, maddened at the sight and the sound and the thought, kissing his swearing mouth. Blake jerked, into his cock, jerked quick and hard. And the first hot gush that Avon had wrestled from him went into his trousers. The smell that would have driven him wild, muffled. He wanted to bathe in it, drink it. Not fair, Avon protested, ready to thump him – give me you.

But Blake had him in a knot of arms. Blake was rocking him, chafing him against himself, precisely how it was fantastic. Nipping his neck, urging him husky, go on, go on. Damp and wheezed breath, snaking strong tongue. Avon stopped worrying and let him do it to him, knees loose and open. Because Blake, not jaded or soured with his own end, was as eager for Avon's as Avon was – working him for it, insisting now, go on, working from behind at his thigh near the balls and chafing him against – he felt the puddle seeping through Blake's trousers –

– and coming was a rich deep heave, possessing him more hugely than when he fought for it. He only reared and clung, spurting into his flesh, everything spurting out to Blake, and he cried only once, an amazed cry, where he'd feared Blake hearing his noise. And Blake's soft ragged yeses suggested that Avon peaking was as good as peaking again himself.

Avon clung, swayed in a sea of forgetfulness, tight arms around him. Tightening further to bruise his ribs, muffled breath behind his ear. Then Blake pushed him curtly to his feet.

His shirt hung wrinkled over his open trousers. He pulled his fingers through his damp hair. Blake had resolutely closed corduroys, a dripping navel, and misgivings in his face. He was staring into Avon. A knack he had. Figuring out Avon was his game as baiting Blake was Avon's. After a session of it, he would tacitly strut another guess into one of the chinks or crannies of his technician.

Blake's stare released him, whereupon Avon noticed that his sweat had gone cold. Stuffing his fists beneath his armpits, Blake crossed to the porthole, swaying pensively there on his heels. Adrift in a foreign cabin, Avon groped for a silence breaker. “Wasn't so bad, was it?” Actually, he was sure that Blake had liked it only ambivalently.

“No. Easiest forfeit I've had to do. I think it would be wise in future to deal with my dementia in private.”

“Blake, you can argue you did that as a forfeit, if you must. If you can forget it happened in the morning.”

“Doubt you'll let me,” said Blake. “Mission accomplished, Avon. You can brag to the crew and pile another anti-Blake missile in your arsenal.”

This was deliberate comedy. “I see I have you in a state of paranoia. My mission has only begun, Blake. At least by my reckoning, I've expended an extravagance of persuasion for just a one night stand. And I mean stand,” he added, rolling his eyes. “Maybe you can take your trousers off next time.”

“Might enjoy it too much then.”

Avon paused. “That is the general idea.”

Blake announced, “I'm conditioned, Avon. Remember I was a model citizen exhibit. Convicted for moral deviation. That means --” he waved behind him – “your kind. Which crime, of course, I'd not been guilty of since my brainwashing. I have to conserve my fight. I was programmed with political loyalty too. Planting bombs in Federation installations can trigger punishment bombs in my own head. I get nightmares. Last thing you need is me waking up and screaming you've corrupted me.”

Gan didn't give you nightmares, Avon was tempted to retort. No-one was supposed to have noticed that once, after an horrific afternoon investigating a massacre, Blake had reeled to Gan's quarters to drown his spectres. And emerged the next morning, sunny as a binary star world. Avon had guessed. The crew had guessed. No – Blake was obfuscating.

“No-one off heavy suppressants listens to the conduct codes,” he said. “The elite-alphas who framed them screw anything sentient. I could tell you tales that would disgust a nice deviant like you.” He bared his teeth, a grin of contempt. “I was one. A product, in fact, of the system you mean to eradicate. Is that it, Blake? Am I too much the alpha for you? All cerebral and animal.”

“No, nothing like.” Blake swung around. “You're not like them.” He hurled wide a demagogue's hand. “But hell, Avon, how can we?”

“I'll give you lessons.”

“Don't be obtuse. How can you and I share a bed and the flight deck? We'd clash in bed for what happens on the flight deck and on the flight deck for what happens in bed. Or is that the plan? You twist me up between your flirtation and your war. Neat way to defeat me on both fronts. Defuse me on the flight deck with your charms. Knock me about here with your arguments. Wouldn't work, Avon. A shame, but... Can we agree not to tantalize each other with impossibilities?”

Avon listened to him, and sensed he was dodging. Blake had begun this. Blake had flirted first. He wouldn't wriggle off the hook. “Funnily enough,” he said, “I thought things on the flight deck might be easier, if we did this.”

He nodded. “Easier for you? I'm sure of that.”

You never did see how I see through you, thought Avon. “No, Blake. Easier for you. You're on permanent revolutionary fatigue duty. You hate it. You resent it. I am offering you a night off from time to time. You might last longer that way.”

Blake stabbed a finger. “Your subversion, Avon, is far from subtle. You must have learnt your tactics from me.”

There was a clue. Avon cocked his head. “Blake, what we just did couldn't be further removed from politics. Flight deck politics, or revolutionary. Might you explain why you see suggestions of our sleeping together as subversion and mutiny?”

Blake stalled, faced to the star whorls out the porthole. Avon, rather late, jerked his jeujo-skin trousers and belt back together. He drilled a stare into Blake's shoulders. He had touched them – ample in his hands, tough underneath with tender skin. They had a defensive expression, up in a semi-shrug which didn't drop again. Avon often had to read his shoulderblades instead of his face. “If you don't like having sex with me, Blake, spit it out.”

Blake wheeled around, picked up Avon's hand, and sat them in his two chairs, knee to knee. “You see,” he said, “you would subvert me.”

“I won't mention your damn rebellion while in our quarters.”

“Even if you didn't mean to. You would. There you have it.”

“I can't say I follow the logic in that.”

“There likely isn't any. Not your kind.”

“You wouldn't spell your whimsical kind out for me?” He suspected Blake of playing with him – enjoying his dead-end mental whirrings. Clicks and whirrings. Computations. Blake was a riddle to him.

“That's my business.” Then he added, “Don't rack your brains.”

Avon glared. He might have been furious if Blake weren't fiddling with his hand, between the chairs, his thumb running over Avon's finger. Blake looked sad and humorous. “So we do our screwing in anonymous bars on planet leave?” Blake shifted his eyes away. “Or I do. And you do nothing.”

“I hate,” said Blake, not poking fun now, “to be a frustration to you.”

No doubt he was reeking frustration. “What do you do?”

“What do you think I do, Kerr?” When Avon stared on, relentless, shameless, curious, he said with a shrug, “I dream.”

Avon was a poor dreamer in this sense too. The only imagining he permitted himself was of waylaying Blake, agreeing to raid anything with him in return for... Generous Blake would kneel beside his bunk, gulp his parched cock. Loosen him up and wipe him out. Next morning, Avon would be paralysed by a spine-hit on a raid he had traded for. Blake would abandon him and security would grill him for three months before plunging a laser probe in his brain. This downbeat ending functioned to prevent any such rashness as waylaying Blake.

Avon twisted out a smile. “I have nothing much to dream about.”

“Neither do I. I'm a bit forgetful.” Blake, with his spare hand dug under the bone where his hair straggled, the nape of his neck. He had a confessional manner. He looked hungover and dogged. “So as you can guess, I've been dreaming about us. If you resent that, I'll stop.”

This might be the absurdest night in his history. Avon stopped staring, flattered. Slighted. Blake did get hot with him – in his absence. This was warped. This was damn intriguing. While Avon, sordid of dream and unpersuasive of practice, was left out in the cold. “I didn't live up to your picture of me?” he asked with irony.

“I wouldn't picture as other than you are. Therefore my dreams are funny things. I can never quite – uncross our purposes.”

“Roj Blake, you compare in frustration to Zen's disinformation option.”

He laughed, eyes down on his knees. “Then disengage me, as you would Zen.”

He dropped the fingers from his. Blake furled them and put them in his lap.

“Under protest,” said Avon.

“Noted.” Blake didn't glance up, chin on his knuckles, head angled.

The door slid open. Walking out, Avon was heavy with soured liquor and soured potential. He had not described to Blake how having sex with him was – less fatuous. Than he was used to. He had despised neither Blake nor himself, afterwards. He had liked it. He _had_ liked it. The corridor was a bleak tunnel. He hated his cabin. He didn't switch on the lights. He might hate Blake. He wished he hated him. He wished he hadn't said he needed him. He would give Blake hell tomorrow. Why would Blake want to sleep with him, he just had a shark in his gut and a cold brain in his head and nothing in between. He was a robot who screwed. But he wanted to screw Blake. He wanted Blake to touch him. He wanted Blake to cure him. And so he played to get him in a game of cards. Marvellous. But then, wasn't he 'heavy-handed and distinctly deficient in sympathy'?

#

Even his mirror image next morning puzzled him. Overwork, used as a narcotic, often left him a mess of a face. But his eyes had never stared at him so dubiously from gloomy skin. His jaw was a sullen clamp, and the crack separating his brows gave him a lopsided look.

So Blake had declared himself a prohibited space zone.

Shaving slowly, Avon admired the depth of the injury, in a face whose neutrality could spook him. No more gaming, drinking, joking. His face stared out at him, dead serious with privation. Haves and have-nots. Blake didn't care if he had nothing. Faceless swarms of labour grades were more his thing. Sleeps with his cause.

Ruthlessness going through his head, meanness and tenaciousness and greediness. He scared himself. He ought to scare Blake.

#

To breakfast, Avon took a rather too speculative treatise on the negative universe. This he grunted into in response to Blake's phenomenally normal “good morning.” Fine for Blake. He simply dismissed everything but the strike on Pluto Three, scheduled for five hours' time. Three of them at breakfast hung over the table, hungover. Vila slouching and sighing, and in keeping with the rules of the card game, bothering Avon with no leers. Vila was a professional. Blake, leaning on his elbows, drank strong coffee and worked through bacon and eggs. Nothing like determination. Avon glanced under his brows to Jenna, menacing Blake with tales of hidden cameras and recordings of him in costume. Jenna had trifled with an anarchist, the last night on Artemis. Later, with a pirate... Then a ship's engineer, perhaps chosen out of fondness for engineers. Spacers didn't have the time to wait for Earth alphas.

Avon was last to the flight deck. There, he saw Blake in a huddle with Gan, who had monitored military traffic through the early hours. Once, Blake had plunged into a gravitational vortex to find a medic for Gan. Never a cross word between those two. Until the Terra Nostra. Then Blake had faced ethical condemnation from his dependable goon, along with the news that the criminal class whose revolt he'd wanted to politicise was as bought as the army. Terrorising troopers as a profession was becoming dirtier and dirtier.

Keying Orac, Avon said amid the morning industry, “Orac, give me a prediction.”

Blake wasn't that absorbed in his military traffic. “Wait, Avon. What prediction?”

He pretended that the computer had asked. “Predict for me the result of our proposed raid of Space Defence's tactical computer on the planet Plato Three.”

“Wipe that, Orac.” Blake was on his feet. “I thought we had agreed. No peeping into the future. Compromises your choices.”

Avon, with an urbane glance to his one-night-stand, thought – I'll give him mutiny. “I can't see anything compromising your choices, Blake. But I prefer percentages. Orac is more meticulous in strategy than you. Answer my question, Orac.”

“There will be no raid on Plato Three.”

Blake jerked his attention from Avon to Orac. “Eh? - why not?”

“You, Blake, will abort the mission after hearing my prognosis.”

“The cheek of it,” complained Blake. “Go on.”

Cally, passing with a box of bombs, paused beside Avon to listen.

“Jenna's expectation of survival is eighty-seven percent. Blake's is sixty-two percent. Avon's is twenty-eight percent.”

Blake roamed off to lean a hand against Zen. “Why so low?” he demanded of Avon.

“I wonder. Perhaps my education is dating.” He touched Orac, caught short, as he had intended to catch Blake. “Your crusade leaves me little time to study.”

Blake was thinking. “Orac, how about if I sabotage the computer?”

“Your expectation of survival would be thirteen percent.”

Avon smiled. “Less, since at those odds I would refuse to instruct you.”

The flight deck had gone quiet. Blake scowled in the direction of Plato Three, green and bulbous on the starmap. “That tactics computer had devised cost-efficient hell for thirteen planets. So far.”

“So stop the machine, Blake.” Avon, his skin creeping at the near miss, decided to tease Blake. “Last time logic told us we were dead, you rejected logic. _Logic had never defined what dead means._ You know what dead means. Why not blood us? If not this mission it will happen on another. Time you faced the fact that this crew is as mortal as your Freedom Party used to be. Before they were massacred.”

Blake turned to him in aggressive debate. “I doubt Orac's prediction function to begin with. I reject his percentages. What about the subjective factors in our decisions and performance? If human emotion could be computed, the Federation wouldn't need psychostrategists.”

“Let us test that, Blake. Orac, if Blake and I swap jobs, what happens to my chances?”

“You, acting as decoy, would be reduced to forty-nine percent.”

“Ah,” said Avon. “You had sixty-two. I can be no less homicidal in entertaining the troopers than you, Blake. Therefore Orac must be suggesting that I would be distracted by disgust at your fumbling after you fry yourself in the computer defences. A subjective factor.”

It was duel by computer. Zen flew on to Plato Three, with Blake framed by his hexagon of amber and brown. “Next,” Blake growled, “you'll be asking your amiable crate whether the resistance is statistically viable.”

“The question is, whether the resistance is tenable for you, Blake. Or whether you're too soft. Blood keeps the revolution revolving. And not only the masked blood of troopers. Ours. You can ask me to go down to Plato Three. I am your computer wrecker. I am your laser fodder. Your other choice, Blake, is to surrender to the president.”

Hit a tender spot, Avon noted. Blake was spoiling for a brawl, eyes a sallow glimmer. Rings around them, too. “Nobody tells me I have no choice. And the day I stop shooting in the president's general direction, I shoot myself.” He picked up Orac from the trolley between them, and hurled him past Avon's boots. The computer lurched into the railings.

Blake stalked for the exit.

The crew were struck dumb, and likewise Orac, on the deck with his key flung out. Avon hoisted Orac to a more dignified position. Then he about-faced to the consoles, and the audience. Vila had his sore head in his hands, muttering. Gan suggested, “Maybe we should change course. Before we arrive at Plato Three anyway.”

“Our course is Blake's prerogative,” Jenna reminded anyone who might need reminding.

Avon punched the ship-wide intercom. Urbane, he asked, “Blake, where are you?”

A protracted silence. Then, “Engine room. Stripping the third drive. Looks like a long job.”

“Where would you like us to fly meanwhile, Blake?”

“To hell for all I care.”

“Might you be more spatially specific?”

“Ask the crew. Fly in circles.” Blake switched off.

#

They flew in circles.

That afternoon, while Gan had the watch, Blake trudged back onto the flight deck. Oil-smeared, as he tended to be when moody. He had the habit of forgetting his confusions by wading in the intricacies of machinery, and he wouldn't wash up until he cheered up. Gan didn't try to cheer him up. Blake nodded in a taciturn hello, punched up third sector star maps, and began plotting with Zen. After a weapons development base. Gan gathered he intended to plunder serious explosives, and laser cannons. He minded his instruments, an ear on Zen and Blake.

An hour later, Blake addressed him, to ask where Orac might be. Orac might be with Avon in his work station, a deck below. Blake deputised him to fetch the thing.

Gan poked a mild face around Avon's door. He interrupted Avon gnashing his teeth at the computer, abusive and with a three-pronged, beeping fork in hand. Bizarre tools cluttered his desk, and read-outs flickered green data down from the walls.

The technician asked, “What is he doing?”

“Planning,” answered Gan, noncommittal.

“If he thinks he needs Orac, he is mistaken.”

Gan was obliged to inform Blake of this fact. Blake through a scowl like a grenade and gave him permission to use force in the retrieval of Orac.

Gan retraced his steps to Avon's den. “Are you sure what you're doing is particularly crucial? Frankly, you might humour Blake.”

“Tell him,” said Avon, “I am engaged in a scientific revolution.”

“You wouldn't care to tell him yourself?” He nodded to the intercom.

Avon radiated sarcasms.

So Gan relayed Avon's message. Blake slammed the intercom. “Bring me Orac before I depressurise your section.”

Gan winced. His watch, he noticed by the timepiece, was over. He debated with himself, and then removed himself from the deck.

#

Avon stepped down into the flight deck, site of last night's Dementia game. Blake was facing away to Zen, shirtsleeves rolled up, the rear of his trousers oily where he'd wiped his hands. “I have Orac in pieces,” reported Avon, a slight exaggeration. “It isn't functional.”

“Then get him functional.”

“Give me... three hours or so.” He began to step back.

“You must rob me of it, mustn't you?”

“Orac?”

Blake twisted around, harassed. “I won't stop, Avon. I'm not proud of things. But stopping would mean nothing can stop the zombie drugs, the massacres, the rehabilitation wards, the slavery.”

“I know you won't stop.”

“You can leave the ship. I'll find another computer wrecker to feed the lasers.”

“I see.”

Blake snorted. “Why are you being so perverse today, Avon? What does it matter to you?”

“What does _what_ matter?”

Facing Zen again, he chafed his sleeve against his cheek. “I'm a mutoid, Avon. Wanting only the body modifications. My mind was done over. Wiped like theirs. A mutoid soldier for the revolution. Only duty matters. Time I resigned myself to behaving like what I am.”

Avon said, “You're not a mutoid, Blake.”

“Not when I begin sleeping with people, no. Mutoids don't do that.”

To himself, Avon remarked, “Robot meets mutoid.”

Blake turned to him, quizzical, over his misery. “You've become bad for me, Kerr. Keep me too human. Didn't dare take my trousers off. Ridiculous, isn't it? But I wouldn't have been able to stop. That's only twice I've touched another human being since being brainwashed. Going on six years. The other time was a bit of a joke too. I was even drunker then. Did me good. At first, I thought you would do me good. Then I saw you'd do me harm. Need too much. You do, when you're gutted. I'm just a husk, Kerr. No memory. I don't know who I ever slept with. And you were prepared to go to bed with that?”

Avon watched him. “If I liked being a robot,” he said, “you'd be bad for me too.”

Blake thought about that, contemplating his boots. Then he dropped on the couch the scrawled papers he had hung onto, his plans, and left the deck.

#

Avon met Gan in the corridor. Orac in his arms, and giddy after twelve hours at his desk, he inquired of Gan, “Where might our fearsome leader be?”

“In his cabin, I think, but Avon...”

“Yes, Gan?”

“No-one's heard a peep out of him since last quarter, and perhaps we ought not bother him.”

Gan's weight loomed between him and the living quarters.

Avon treated him to an exhibition of teeth. “I don't mean to bother him, Gan. I mean to cure his bad temper.”

Gan fingered his chin there for a while, and then permitted him to pass.

Outside Blake's cabin, which tonight was shut tight, Avon pressed the speaker button with his elbow. He said, “Roj.” He waited. With patience.

“Tomorrow,” replied Blake from within.

Avon pressed the button again. “Blake, I have done mutinous things to your computer, which I think you should be alerted to.”

The door opened. Blake was buttoning his shirt. He eyed his guest, humourless and in need of a shave, and nodded him in. He burrowed his hands in his pockets. “What is it?”

Finding a spare area of desk among the paper piles, Avon dumped the heavy computer down. Blake rocked slightly on his heels, grim about the jaw.

Stationed beside Orac, Avon delivered his report. “Nine months ago, you questioned me as to the feasibility of Orac tampering with Federation computer systems. Ensor had forbidden any destructive interference, and I dismissed the possibility of eradicating such a fundamental restriction. Ensor immortalised his misanthropic nature in Orac's defences against radical reprogramming. I refused to burn my fingers off.”

“Yet he bedevilled the System's computers,” objected Blake, getting interested.

“Orac had no programming regarding computers under the jurisdiction of the System. Were it not for Ensor's inhibition, it could wreak similar havoc among the networks of Space Command, Earth Defence, Planet Administration.”

Blake complained on, “A defected scientist like him, and he safeguards the Federation against his own brainchild.”

“Remember he was proposing to sell Orac to Servalan. Hardly the action of a rebel sympathiser. He must have predicted what might become of galactic order if the likes of you ever got your hands on the computer. His notion of neutrality, I suppose. You told me he was a pacifist.”

“I always was miffed that Orac wouldn't scramble any pursuit ship launch systems for us.”

“Yes. I noticed.” Avon keyed the computer, and instructed, “Orac, render inoperative the tactics computer on planet Plato Three. Don't leave enough to repair.” With professional nonchalance, he drummed his fingers on the casing.

“Complete. If that is all I will resume inspecting my circuitry for damage from your meddling.”

Blake glanced from Orac to Avon, and declared flatly, “You're joking.”

“Orac, status report on the tactics computer on Plato Three.”

“Memory banks and major programming eliminated.”

Avon plucked out the key, and leaning over Orac, dropped it in Blake's shirt pocket. “Yours. Enjoy yourself.”

Blake exploded, “Kerr Avon, you erased the inhibition.”

He made a modest gesture.

Blake rumpled his curls, then thumped Orac. “Orac, I'd hug you if you weren't plastic.” He launched into strides, here and there about his cabin. “I can attack Control from light years away.” He sat down on his bed. He tossed up the key and snatched it from the air. “Is he selective? I can target security, but conserve climate control.” He jumped to his feet. “I'm going to tell the crew.”

“Blake.”

He stopped at the door.

“You do grasp the fact, Blake, that I have just bribed you?”

“Have you just?”

“I didn't slave for twelve hours, and risk losing my fingers, for the sake of your rebellion.”

“No,” he said, slow. “What do you charge?”

“Forfeits. With your trousers off, Blake.” He nodded. “Perhaps in bed.”

Blake leant on his arm next to the door.

Avon continued, “I won't subvert you from your bloodthirsty purposes any longer. When you can wage a saner war. Or be bad for you when you no longer have to feed the lasers. I suppose you can give up on the mutoid trip. If I have managed to follow your logic, Blake.”

“Roj,” he demanded.

“Roj.”

“Did you do this for me?”

“No,” he frowned. “For me.”

Blake laughed. “To safeguard your survival, I suppose?”

“That too.”

“Whatever. You're a genius, Kerr.”

“I'm rather demented, Roj. I am... a mess. I was less of a mess last night. The earlier part. Less – robotic.”

“Mutoid meets robot?”

“Has a disastrous ring...”

“Done,” said Blake.

Avon suggested, “We can always tell the crew in the morning.”

Blake grinned at him. “You only needed to persuade me.”

###  
###


End file.
